Later Survivals of the Primitive Glass
There are in the British Museum some little glass amphoræ from Camirus and Ialysus in Rhodes, and others from Amathia and Salamis in Cyprus, on which the chevron bands are not incorporated into the glass base, but laid on the surface as in later enamelled ware. The chevrons in such cases cannot have been ‘dragged’ by the old ingenious plan; they must have been elaborately applied one by one. We may recognise probably in such cases the survival of an old method of decoration after the technical process by which it was produced had been lost. The glass itself, too, is of a late type—transparent and hastily formed. I think that the date of some of these ‘scamped’ chevron vases may be later than is generally thought.
The beads and other objects of verroterie from the Cyprian and Rhodian tombs differ much from those found in the Mycenæan sepulchres of Continental Greece. There are in the British Museum some large beads of perfectly clear glass from Ialysus in Rhodes[[18]]; these are probably of Asiatic origin. We must also range with this ‘primitive’ glass the large beads—if beads they are to be called—in the form of satyr-like masks, so widely spread through Mediterranean lands ([Pl. XV.], 1), as well as those of irregular shape that so closely resemble the old ‘bull’s eye’ sweetmeats, built up of interlacing bands of various colours. Indeed the technique of the manufacture of these beads was probably very similar to that of those handmade ‘lollipops,’ for in spite of its lower fusing-point, and of its solubility in water, there are many points of resemblance between sugar in a state of semi-fusion and glass in a similar condition.[[19]]
What little I have to say of the rare specimens of glass of a more advanced type found in Greek tombs, I will postpone to the next chapter.